McCaffery: Don't wait too long to enjoy the best of college hoops

The Lakers’ Steve Nash, right, celebrates with teammate Steve Blake after scoring in the second half Friday night against the 76ers. In the 76ers’ bid to get younger and start fresh, they must have forgotten about Nash, who turned 40 Friday and is still playing at a high level. (Associated Press)

It’s the most interesting month of the college basketball season, the one that should cause co-workers to compare opinions and double-entendre on-line handles, the one that should keep TVs tuned into the ever-captivating matches.

There are many names for it. But it is commonly referred to as … February Madness.

That’s right. College basketball really does hit its real peak before the gambling sheets are stashed in office mailboxes.

Nothing against March Madness, which has its own appeal, but that is limited to 68 teams, 100 if the NIT is recognized, and it should. But February Madness (which will leak into earliest March) includes all 351 Division I programs, each with its own frenzied, 11th-hour agenda.

Advertisement

Some are trying to maneuver into NCAA Tournament consideration. Others are readying for their conference tournaments, and the right to win their way in. Others are positioning themselves for postseason seeding. Some are trying to improve. Others are trying to survive.

All are trying.

Come bracket-pool time, there will be one championship decided. Before then, there will be 32.

Popular perception aside, it’s not even a fair fight.

• Spin it however you please, but ever since Andrew Bynum left the 76ers, they haven’t been as good.

• The Seattle Seahawks needed 12 seconds to take a 2-0 lead in the Super Bowl. Put another way, at that point they already had scored enough to beat the Phillies in a playoff game.

• Just thinking out loud, but the next time the NFL runs a Super Bowl in a suburban stadium by multiple freeways and surrounded by dozens of acres of parking lots, maybe it should encourage people to drive to the game. Always remember the No. 1 rule of public transportation: The people encouraging you to use it … aren’t.

•••

The Sixers want to become younger through the accumulation of high draft choices. Never mind that the Sacramento Kings have been following that blueprint since California was a territory and they — how to say this? — never stop losing. But that’s the Sixers’ plan, so deal with it.

All of which made the play of Steve Nash the other night in the Wells Fargo Center more delightful. On the day he turned the Big Four-Oh, the two-time NBA MVP was the best, most entertaining, most complete player in a 112-98 Lakers victory.

There is a gold medalist in the competition for most absurd sports-TV invention of all time.

The Pro Bowl? No. The three-day-long NFL Draft? Nope. The selection show for the NBA futures-game rosters? No … but that did take the silver.

The winner: The monotony of (ta-da) high school football’s National Signing Day.

Not only does that waste time telling sports fans what they already know, it over-glamorizes kids who have accomplished nothing but a certain score on a ratings scale typically administered by self-appointed know-it-alls often unable to land recruiting jobs of their own.

•••

Not everything in sports was better years ago.

For proof, check out that on-demand video of Notre Dame ending UCLA’s 88-game basketball winning streak in 1974 and try not to cringe at the lack of defense. And if you think Andy Reid can mangle a clock, wait until you see John Robert Wooden take a crack at it, allowing his players to keep missing shots, with a lead, late, even though there was no shot clock and Notre Dame was not fouling.

• A Ukrainian ice-dancing team prepared for the Olympics in — don’t you know? — Hackensack, N.J.

Oh, for those glorious days when people in North Jersey would have been more weary of what invading Ukrainians were up to than the curator of the George Washington Bridge.

•••

Do you get Vladimir Putin?

•••

Keith Allen died last week at the age of 90. No one in modern Philadelphia sports history — not a coach, not an administrator, not an owner, not a player, not a broadcaster — ever was better at his job.

Not only did the former general manager maneuver the Flyers into two championships within the first eight years of their existence, but he did so by so robbing other franchises of talent that he would earn the nickname “Keith the Thief.”

Allen helped to redefine how hockey was played in North America, building a team around brawn and bullying, then trusting the brilliance of Fred Shero, who was among the first North Americans to embrace the subtleties of the Russian hockey system. Deservedly, Allen went into the Hall of Fame.

So, the recap: Two championships in eight years, the reinvention of the sport and a spot in the Hall of Fame.

“He was this organization,” Flyers chairman Ed Snider said. “He’s the guy that hired Fred Shero. He is the guy that drafted the players that won the Cups for us. He is in the Hall of Fame, but despite that fact, I think he’s not gotten the kind of accolades that he deserves because I never remember a trade that he made that was a bad trade. The guy was sensational and our players loved him. He was a nice guy. He did what he had to do in the right way. I can’t say enough about him.”

•••

Cyndi Lauper just keeps getting better with age.

•••

The Oklahoma State basketball team was inconsiderate enough recently to suffer three consecutive losses, one a classic in triple overtime. So, the Stillwater News Press offered a neighborly suggestion. Care to venture a guess? Still stumped? Well, here was the headline: “Slumping Cowboys in need of a ‘Smart’ Culture Change.”

Yep, had they (every-body-clap-your-hands) Changed ... The … Culture after that second overtime, they never would have been beaten in the third.

•••

That three-digit code hidden on the back of a credit card is great because scam artists have no idea that is there.